Intake of Vitamins for Depression

AdminSeptember 12, 2017 Comments Off on Intake of Vitamins for Depression

If you want to take vitamins for depression, it can be a wise move, because there are specific vitamin deficiencies that lead or contribute to developing depression symptoms.

If you experience any symptoms of depression, you need to get help from qualified doctors and therapists before you start taking any vitamins and supplements. When deficient, some vitamins are connected with depression. However, food is always the best source of all important nutrients, including vitamins. That’s why you need to eat a balanced and healthy diet to ensure that you get enough of them.

B-Complex Vitamins

These vitamins are important to people’s emotional and mental well-being. They are water-soluble, which means that they can’t be stored in the human body. You require a daily diet to supply B-complex vitamins that may be depleted by refined sugars, alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. If any of these substances are a big part of your current lifestyle, you may have vitamin deficiency. Take a look at these findings to see a link between depression and B-complex vitamins.

Vitamin B1

The brain uses thiamine to convert blood sugar or glucose into the necessary fuel, so it runs out of energy without this vitamin. Its deficiencies are quite rare, but they usually accompany alcohol abuse conditions and result in a range of neurologic and psychiatric symptoms.

Vitamin B5

Any deficiency of pantothenic acid is also rare, but it may result in such unwanted symptoms as depression and unusual fatigue.

Vitamin B3

Niacin deficiencies may lead to pellagra, a serious condition that produces dementia and psychosis in addition to other unwanted symptoms. There are many commercial food products that contain vitamin B3, and that’s why this disease is very rare. Subclinical deficiencies of niacin may produce anxiety, agitation and physical and mental slowness.

Vitamin B6

Pyridoxine helps the human body process amino acids, which serve important building blocks of certain hormones and all proteins. This vitamin is also necessary to produce such neurotransmitters as dopamine, serotonin and melatonin. Its deficiencies are very rare, but they lead to skin lesions, impaired immunity and mental confusion.

Sometimes, marginal deficiencies affect alcoholics, women who take oral contraceptives and patients with kidney failure. Ironically, the intake of MAO inhibitors results in shortage of vitamin B6, and there are many nutritionally oriented healthcare providers who think that many diets don’t provide enough of it.

Folic acid

This vitamin is necessary for the DNA synthesis and production of SAM. Unfortunately, bad dietary habits lead to its deficiencies, just like different drugs, diseases and alcoholism. Doctors often advise pregnant women to take folic acid to prevent possible neural tube defects in unborn babies.

Vitamin B12

This vitamin plays an important role in formation of red blood cells, and that’s why its deficiency results in anemia and different psychiatric and neurological symptoms. Any vitamin deficiency takes quite a while to develop, because the human body stores a 3- or 5-year supply in a liver. When there’s any shortage, it’s often caused by the lack of intrinsic factor, which is the enzyme that lets vitamin B12 to be absorbed in the intestinal system, and this condition is called pernicious anemia. Older people develop deficiencies more often because this enzyme diminishes with age.

Vitamin C

Its deficiencies may result in different depression symptoms, and they require the intake of special supplements, especially if you have inflammation or surgery. Such factors as lactation, stress and pregnancy increase the need for this vitamin.